Xander sat patiently as the nurse applied a large wound dressing to his grazed shoulder. The new injury was higher on the same arm as the stab wound, which had opened and bled a little from his actions earlier. It had been freshly dressed, and now the shoulder was just about done too.
Gibbs stood nearby, and nodded when when the nurse said Xander could go. They headed down the hospital corridor. Xander grimaced at the sting from his new wound.
"Ugh, that's going to hurt for a while." He paused. "Guess I should be happy I still have both arms though."
"Yeah, and your head," Gibbs drawled. "So what happened to these marines?"
"They were under a mesmer." At Gibbs' sideways glare, Xander continued. "It's somewhere between brainwashing and hypnotism. Willow took the mesmer off, so they should be fine now."
"Just like that?"
"Apparently."
Gibbs grunted. They turned a corner to where Tony waited in the corridor.
"Hey Boss. Xander," he greeted cheerfully. "How's your shoulder?"
Xander instinctively shrugged, then grimaced.
"He'll be fine if he doesn't get any more knife wounds in that arm," Gibbs cut in. "Any news?"
Tony looked back towards the double doors leading to the ward, where Xander presumed the marines were now being treated.
"Doc says they're fine, not a mark on them." Tony looked back at them. "It looks like they weren't even restrained. Why didn't they realise something was wrong?"
"Some sort of hypnotism, DiNozzo," Gibbs replied.
"A cult that hypnotises people into joining?" Tony mused. "That's genius."
Gibbs rolled his eyes. "What about mentally?"
"Shrink is with them now, doing an initial assessment," Tony replied.
Gibbs nodded. "Get the report, then meet us back at the office."
"Sure Boss. Hey, Probie?" Tony grabbed Xander's uninjured arm as Gibbs walked away. "You gotta teach me some of your sword fighting skills! Those moves earlier -that was awesome!"
"Harris!" Gibbs called.
"Maybe," Xander grinned. He hurried to catch Gibbs up. "Coming Boss!"
Gibbs strode out of the elevator, Xander following at a slightly more sedate pace. They both stopped when they saw Ziva and Giles standing in the middle of the bullpen. Then Gibbs pushed past to his desk.
"Da-vid. Thought I told you to stay with the Council's team."
"Yes, Gibbs. You did."
Xander made his way past to his own desk. Gibbs looked at Ziva expectantly.
"I stayed with them until they came back here. Then Mr. Giles and Miss Summers had a private meeting with Vance. When they emerged, Vance ordered me to stay here, and the girls left."
Gibbs turned his expectant gaze to Giles. Giles cleared his throat.
"Yes, well, everything at the warehouse had been, uh, finished," he said. "Which meant there was only one thing left to deal with before we could consider the whole matter closed."
"Fox," Gibbs stated.
"Indeed."
Gibbs moved out from behind his desk to stand nose to nose with Giles. "You mean to tell me they've gone to deal with this bastard without informing me, and without taking any of my team as witness?"
"Yes, that is precisely what has happened. And your director approved," Giles replied calmly.
"Why?" Gibbs demanded.
"Because it would be a political minefield for us, Gibbs," came Vance's voice. Xander looked up to see Vance leaning on the railing, halfway up the stairs.
Gibbs took a moment to consider the director. "What do you know, Leon?"
"I haven't been read in, if that's what you're asking. I believe you have been?"
Gibbs gave a curt nod. Vance turned away to head down the stairs and over to the bullpen.
"Mr Giles and Miss Summers informed me that NCIS doesn't have the evidence to bring these people to justice our way. They also convinced me that attempting to bring charges against your main suspect in this case would only lead to public humiliation of the agency. Now, I have it on good authority that the Council is a trustworthy ally, so I took their word for it," said Vance with a nod to Giles. "But I'd sure as hell feel better if you backed them up on those points, Gibbs."
Xander watched with interest. Ziva, he could see, was doing the same from her desk.
Gibbs conceded the point with a slight nod. "Yeah, it's true."
"So if you brought this guy in, and it went to trial, what are the chances we'd win?"
Gibbs didn't answer immediately, so Xander said what they all knew. "Zero. He'd get away with it."
"Which is exactly what we told your Director," put in Giles. "Therefore, he allowed us to handle this part of the matter, and allow NCIS to avoid any political issues by associating your name only with the rescue of the marines."
Xander was impressed. Buffy and Giles had thought this through. They could handle Fox their own way without being held back by NCIS's rules. And they were right of course: they didn't have any non-magical evidence against Senator Fox, except the word of a demon office-cleaner. There was no way it could go to trial. NCIS would lose face, and probably funding too. And Vance and the whole MCRT team could lose their jobs if it became a big enough embarrassment to the agency.
Gibbs seemed to realise this too, as he turned back to his desk. He sat down and appeared to be looking something up on his computer.
"Gibbs?" asked Vance.
"Yeah, you're right Leon. The Council can have this one," he muttered. He clearly wasn't happy about the situation, but knew they were right.
"Good. One other thing. Your reports on this are not to mention the Council. Report on your own actions only."
Gibbs nodded. Vance walked off, and Giles excused himself to the break room. Ziva watched him go, then stepped up to lean on Gibbs' desk.
"You agree with this, Gibbs?" she asked, incredulous. "That we should not be the ones catching this guy, and we should hide the facts in our reports?"
Gibbs returned Ziva's look. "I expect you to follow orders, David."
Ziva angrily pushed off the desk and paced into middle of the bullpen. "This is very unlike you, Gibbs. To let another agency take over, especially one we've never heard of before this case? Even Mossad would not shine a lantern on this 'Council' for me. And to agree to limiting our reports in this manner? I do not understand. There is much more going on here than you have told me. I don't believe for a minute that this was the work of some 'cult'. What's really going on?"
The elevator bell had dinged in the middle of her speech, and Tony leaned on the wall of the bullpen for the rest of Ziva's rant.
"I wouldn't mind knowing that, Boss," he added. "Hard to do good work on a case when you're only given half the facts."
"It's need to know, DiNozzo, and I doubt either of you will be read in. What did the shrink say?" Gibbs ignored Ziva completely, which Xander expected would only make her angrier, but she also turned to hear what Tony had to say.
"Nothing we didn't already know. They're all suffering confusion and some level of delusion. Couldn't say what the cause was, and when I mentioned your theory of hypnotism, he looked at me like I needed my head checked." Tony shrugged. "He expects them all to make a full recovery in the next week or two. Hunter and Michaels will probably be discharged tomorrow."
Xander was relieved. Willow had assured him there shouldn't be any lasting damage, but the number of times they'd been certain of something back in Sunnydale, only to find out how wrong they were...
He was surprised out of his thoughts by Ziva sitting on the edge of his desk. He glanced over and noticed Gibbs had left the bullpen. Tony was lounging at his desk.
"You know what is going on, no?"
Xander sighed. "Look, Ziva, I can't tell you anything."
"Because it's classified and Tony and I haven't been read-in?"
"You know this."
Ziva paused briefly. "And this information that we don't have access to, is the reason for Gibbs' strange behaviour?"
"Strange behaviour?" Xander hadn't thought about it, but then, he knew the reasoning behind everything that was happening.
"Yes. He is behaving strangely!" Ziva repeated. "He allowed an unknown agency that he clearly does not trust, to take over the case! He is taking orders from a 25 year old girl! He even consented to leaving our weapons behind when we were going into a hostile situation! These are not things the Gibbs I know would do!"
Her rant done, Ziva stopped. She glared angrily at Xander, daring him to contradict her. He took a moment to pick his words carefully. She was right. If Gibbs had done all of this without Xander knowing why, he would have thought something was wrong too.
"Yes," he answered.
"Yes?" Ziva frowned, confused.
"Yes, the classified information that he knows is the reason why he's doing things you don't understand. It's why you can't understand his decisions, because you don't know the whole story."
"Probie," interrupted Tony. "Since you know this 'classified information', do you think Gibbs' decisions are strange?"
Thank you Tony, Xander thought with relief. Exactly the right question. "No, not at all," he assured them. "Although, as for Gibbs allowing the Council to take over, he didn't have a choice. Orders came from somewhere above Vance that it was their case and we were to co-operate fully. And Gibbs understands the chain of command, so of course he's taking orders from Buffy. If he didn't, they would have taken us off the case completely."
There was a pause as he let them absorb that. Tony leaned back in his chair, apparently satisfied for now. Ziva looked back at Xander and he braced himself for another round.
"You were quite good with that sword earlier," she stated.
Well, that was unexpected. Looked like he was off the hook. He shrugged.
"Up until the point where you had to save my life," he countered.
Ziva shook her head. "A long sword is a difficult weapon. Your opponent seemed stronger and had a heavy weapon -I was impressed by your skill in holding him off."
Xander allowed himself a small grin. "Thanks. Been a long while since I had any practice, so I was a bit impressed with myself, to tell the truth."
"Where did you learn?" she asked, casually. Too casually.
"Er..." Crap. She was fishing for information again. He forced a grin. "Sorry, can't say."
"Are you permitted to speak at all, Probie?" Tony muttered sarcastically.
"Let's do this the other way round then," Xander suggested. "How much have you managed to find out?"
"What do you mean?" asked Ziva.
"About Angel, about Buffy, Willow and Giles, the Council? About me? I know Gibbs had you checking into everyone's backgrounds, so come on. What did you find?"
Ziva and Tony exchanged glances.
"Not much," Tony finally answered. "For starters, we don't have surnames for Angel and his friends. Makes it hard to look them up. Did you know there's more than 180,000 people named 'Angel' in the States? And California has more than it's fair share."
"And I'm not convinced that those are even their real first names," Ziva added.
Xander nodded. "Spike's real name was William, but I don't know about his surname. And I don't know any real name details for Angel or Illyria." Actually, Xander thought Spike and Angels' original names might have been in one of Giles' books, and Buffy or Willow might know them, but that was beside the point.
"I thought you had known Spike and Angel a long time? Yet you do not even know their full names?" Ziva frowned.
Xander shrugged.
"Well, looking up 'William from California' won't do us any good either," Tony grouched. "We were able to find a little more on your Council friends -high school transcripts told us you went to school with Buffy and Willow, and there's immigration details for Giles showing that he took up position at your school, as the librarian. But we got almost zilch on the ISWC. Ziva's friends in Mossad said it's been around forever, but they wouldn't tell us anything about what they do and basically told us to stay out of the Council's way."
"I also found a couple of electronic police reports mentioning you and your friends as witnesses," Ziva added. "But since you lived in that sinkhole town in California, most records have been lost, so that was about all we found."
Xander nodded. "Well, you're not missing much. That's about the sum of it," he agreed casually.
From the disbelieving looks on their faces, neither Tony nor Ziva bought that at all.
"We're still missing most of it!" Ziva sputtered.
"It doesn't explain how your friends managed to be heading up an international agency just a few years out of high school," Tony pointed out.
"Or how you came to be so good with a sword. Did you have a master swordsman teaching classes in Sunnydale?" asked Ziva.
Xander picked the easier of those two topics. "What is with the sword focus? Isn't it enough that I saved our butts back in that warehouse?"
"I want you to teach me," Ziva explained. "I wondered if there was a particular style you had been taught."
"Wait, I asked first!" Tony sat upright in his chair again. "If you teach her, you have to teach me too."
"I don't see why you'd need it," Xander told Ziva. "You're already the best at hand-to-hand combat."
"You can never be skilled in too many forms of fighting, Xander," said Buffy from behind them. "I would have thought you'd know that."
Ziva quickly stood and turned. Buffy and Willow were just arriving at the bullpen. Angel was a few steps behind.
"I did not hear the lift arrive," Ziva frowned.
"We used the stairs," Buffy replied. But they weren't out of breath and the slightly nauseated look on Angel's face made Xander suspect Willow had actually used some sort of portal. "Are Giles and Gibbs around?"
"Right here, Miss Summers," Gibbs said, returning from the break room with Giles in tow.
"Everything taken care of, Buffy?" Giles asked.
"Sure, we just came to update these guys and fetch you so we can call it a night," Buffy replied. Her words were flippant but she sounded tired. Xander checked his watch. Nearly four in the morning.
"Ziva, Tony, go get a coffee," Gibbs ordered.
"I don't want a..." Ziva began, but Tony grabbed her arm.
"C'mon Ziva, I'll make you the DiNozzo Double Mocha Chilli Latte Special. It takes a full five minutes but it's worth it."
"Ten minutes," Gibbs corrected. Tony waved a hand in acknowledgement whilst Ziva argued that there was no cocoa powder kept in the break room, let alone a coffee machine for frothing milk. The group watched as they disappeared down the hall. Out of the corner of his eye, Xander saw Willow mouth some words and make a small hand gesture.
"You got him then?" Giles asked. "Senator Fox was definitely behind this?"
Buffy nodded. "Oh yeah. He did the clichéd 'I'll admit it since I'm going to destroy you with my awesome sorcery' thing. Then we took him down. He won't be doing any more spells, ever."
Gibbs frowned. "By that, you mean..?"
"He's not dead," Angel assured him.
"Oh, no," said Buffy. "I mean, yeah, often enough our work gets, uh... never mind. Point is, we just restrained him long enough for Willow to do her stuff and then sent him home. He won't remember any of this."
"Her stuff?" asked Gibbs, his gaze shifting to Willow.
"I removed all knowledge of the marines and the Badinok Spell from his mind," she explained. "And he won't ever be able do it again. I added a little something extra that basically dampens his ability to use magic at all."
"You can do that?" Gibbs asked, surprised.
"Willow is one of the most naturally talented witches I've ever met," Giles said, a hint of pride in his voice.
"So that should be the end of it," Buffy summed up.
"What about all the missing marines we didn't find in time?" Xander asked.
Buffy shook her head, sadly. "We can't change the past. We can only be glad we managed to save the ones we did."
"Our reports will show that we thought there was a link, but found no proof of it," Gibbs clarified. "They will remain unsolved UA cases." He turned back to the Council representatives. "What now?"
"You mean, after we sleep?" Buffy asked. "We'll be hanging around D.C. for the rest of the week. If we split into pairs to patrol every night, we should be able to cover a lot of ground and hopefully prevent some of the violence, like Angel was originally attempting to do." She acknowledged him with a nod.
"All of this over a prophecy that might not happen at all, let alone happen now," Angel muttered, shaking his head.
"Well, by next week, all this unnecessary violence should be over and we can go home," Giles agreed wearily.
"Then I believe this is as far as our co-operation goes," Gibbs concluded.
Giles agreed. "Thank you for all your help, Agent Gibbs. Working with other law enforcement agencies is rarely pleasant, for us or them, and I'm glad to say this has been one of the easiest I've ever been involved in."
Gibbs looked mildly surprised and shook Giles' offered hand. He nodded politely at the girls.
"Miss Summers, Miss Rosenberg."
"Oh, here, take this." Buffy handed Gibbs her card. "Call us if you ever come across anything supernatural or demon related. We'll be happy to take care of it." Gibbs tucked the card into his pocket.
Willow caught Xander's arm. "You'll come round while we're in town, right? Or can we come check out your new place?" Her eyes lit up at the second possibility.
Xander laughed and gave her a one-armed hug. "Of course, Will. I'll give you a call and we'll make plans for that pizza and movie night, sometime after I've had a decent sleep."
The three Scooby gang members headed for the lift. Angel stepped up to Xander and Gibbs, briefly glancing at Buffy's back.
"You already have my card. If you ever need anything done more quietly than a large team of hormonal girls can do-"
"I can hear you Angel," Buffy commented.
"I'm good at getting information and doing it in a subtle manner," he finished. "So feel free to call. It was good to see you again, Xander. I know Spike was glad to see you too. If you ever come to L.A. on vacation, make sure you stop by."
"You're heading back straight away?" Xander was disappointed he wouldn't get to say goodbye to Spike in person. Then he was surprised to realise he felt that way.
Angel shrugged. "That's up to Buffy, but our, er, supplies, are starting to run low, so we won't stay longer than we need to."
Xander nodded. "I'll definitely have to visit L.A. sometime then."
Angel followed the others to the lift just as the 'ding' announced that it had arrived. Xander saw Willow repeat her gesture from before, then look down the corridor to the break room.
"Okay you two, you can stop trying to listen in now," she called.
After a moment, Ziva and Tony emerged red-faced from a doorway. They were definitely close enough to have heard normal conversation in the bullpen -especially since it was empty of anyone else at 4am. Willow looked back at Xander with a grin.
"Bye Xander, Agent Gibbs." She stepped into the lift after the others and the doors closed behind them. The last thing they heard was Angel and Buffy discussing whether Illyria would have a chance to spar against any of the Slayers while they were in the same city.
Tony and Ziva sheepishly returned to the bullpen.
"Hear anything good?" Gibbs asked drily, walking back to his desk.
"Uh, we didn't hear anything at all, actually," Tony admitted, sounding confused. "I mean, we should have at least been able to hear voices, even if you were speaking quietly and we couldn't make out the words, but it was dead silent, like there was no one here. Even though you were all here." He shuddered briefly, as though spooked.
"Sounds like you need some sleep, DiNozzo," Gibbs replied. "Let's get out of here."
AN: So, things are wrapping up. One chapter to go..